


Language of Flowers

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 11:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9817694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Bellamy Blake, small town florist, is used to sharing in the big moments of his customers' lives. He's seen them through everything from first date jitters to the stages of grief. But this--Clarke Griffin storming into his shop, furious, asking for a hate bouquet--is still something of a surprise.





	

**Author's Note:**

> BFF Fill for: "Flower shop AU Prompt: Person A owns a flower shop and person B comes storming in one day, slaps 20 bucks on the counter and says 'How do I passive-aggressively say fuck you in flower?'" requested by treehousesandpoohbears.
> 
> The title is from _Ulysses_ ("Language of flowers. They like it because no-one can hear."). I don't know anything about flowers so all flower facts were gathered from Google searches for things like "aggressive flowers" and "flower symbolism."

Two weeks ago, at the Bi-Monthly Downtown Arkadia Small Business Association meeting, Luna, from the nature store on the corner, looked at him very seriously, took his hands in hers, and told him that he had been a warrior in another life. "A brave warrior-king," she said. 

Yeah, okay. Maybe in another life.   

In this life, Bellamy's just a guy who knows a ton about flowers.  

 

*

 

Because he knows flowers, and because Arkadia is the sort of small hamlet where people greet each other by name on the street, Bellamy also knows everyone's business. He knows about every engagement, wedding, baby shower, and funeral. He knows which high school kids are going to prom together. He keeps records on his more forgetful customers' anniversaries. And when someone screws up and actually feels bad about it, Bellamy knows about that, too, because nothing says _I'm sorry_ like a purple hyacinth bouquet. 

The people who come into his little shop are sometimes ecstatic, sometimes despondent, often nervous. They're not usually angry, though. Even less often are they _absolutely furious_ . So when Clarke Griffin stomps in, shoving the door open so roughly that even the friendly tinkle of the welcome bell sounds agitated, slams a twenty down on the countertop, and asks, "How I do passively-aggressively say _fuck you_ in flower?" it's a bit of a surprise. 

He stares at her for a long moment, and pauses in arranging the daisies in Harper McIntyre's get-well-soon bouquet. "It sounds to me like you want to _aggressively_ say 'fuck you' in flower." 

Clarke looks like she's about to snap something back at him, but instead, she takes a very deep breath and lets it out slowly. He can practically hear her counting to ten in her head. Then she crosses her arms tight against her chest and says, "What I _really_ want is to be aggressive in person, but I think it would be safer to express myself with a bouquet. But a very—" he sees her fingers clench again—"a very _pointed_ bouquet." 

Six years into this florist thing, Bellamy's also learned how to be an informal therapist, talking people down from first date jitters and pre-wedding cold feet, reassuring them in the face of illness or injury, even easing them through the stages of grief. But this time, he resists the urge to ask, "Do you want to talk about it?" He doesn't know Clarke all that well, but he knows her well enough to be sure she wouldn't take that question well. She'd think he was being patronizing. And given that he does actually find her bright red ears a weird combination of funny and cute, she wouldn't be too far off. 

Instead, he goes with, "What kind of _fuck you_ bouquet do you need specifically? Fuck you for cutting me off in traffic? Fuck you for planting those ugly bushes where I can see them from my kitchen...?" 

"Fuck you for using me to cheat on your awesome girlfriend and then daring to give me roses?" Clarke finishes, a suggestion that puts his assumptions of mundane pettiness to shame and also, because Bellamy's basically running a monopoly on flowers in this town, puts some other recent events into a new perspective. 

“Does this cheater have really shiny long-ish hair, a desperate air about him, and an aversion to tulips?” Bellamy had tried to convince the guy that his I’m-sorry flowers would benefit from some variety, and that white tulips would be particularly appropriate in sending a sincere message of regret, but he’d been set on his traditional dozen red roses. Which was fine, Bellamy supposed, but frustratingly unimaginative. A real apology, he’d wanted to say, should have some thought behind it.

“Yeah.” Clarke nods. “That sounds like him. His girlfriend got a grant to do research in England for six months. He told me they’d broken up. _She_ thought they were still very much together and just doing the temporary long distance thing. She got back last week and—” 

Bellamy can see the tick in her jaw where she’s clenching her teeth together.

“I just feel so _dirty_ now,” she finishes, slight shudder rolling back her shoulders. “I thought I’d ended it, put it behind me, and I could just forget about it and move on. Then I got those stupid flowers and I just…ugh, I just wanted to throw them in his face. Except he didn’t deliver them himself so I couldn’t.”

“And my delivery boy thanks you,” Bellamy answers. Then, more seriously, “Look, you aren’t the one who should feel dirty. At all.” He punctuates his point with his scissors, snapping them closed and then using them to point in her direction at his last two words. “He should.”

He gets a small smile out of her, at least, which is surprising and encouraging. She seems to be warming up a little, relaxing, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. So he slides the scissors and the scraps of leaves and stems from Harper’s bouquet out of the way, and starts moving over large vases of flowers from the shelving unit behind him onto the countertop. Clarke has to stretch up on her toes to see him over a particularly lively collection of bright yellow blossoms. “I see you have a lot of ideas. Do you send hate bouquets a lot?”

“No. I just always have a lot of ideas.” He clears a small space, so they can actually look at each other, and, indicating a bunch of purple flowers in the center of the counter, continues, “I definitely suggest including basil. For the ancient Greeks, it was a symbol of hatred; you can’t get more direct and unambiguous than that.”

“Okay,” Clarke agrees slowly. “But what if I want a more specific message? Like ‘I hate you _because_ you’re selfish and a liar’?”

“You could add in some narcissus,” Bellamy suggests, indicating the yellow flowers. “Named after the young man in the Greek myth who was so vain that he fell in love with his own reflection in a river. It sends that ‘you only care about yourself’ message. Or some geraniums, for stupidity, as in ‘you’re an idiot for treating two amazing women so badly.’ Or yellow roses, similar to the flowers he sent you, except that this color symbolizes infidelity.” 

He leans his hands on the counter, watching Clarke and waiting for some sort of reaction, trying to guess her opinions by reading the thoughtful expression on her face. It’s hard to tell. She could just be making a decision. She could be admiring the beauty of the sweet-smelling purple and yellow blooms. Flowers can be so unexpectedly soothing, even for the most agitated, the most worried, the most torn up inside. Or she might be disappointed, because not even a beautiful, spiteful arrangement can undo the past. 

“Do you think it’s direct enough?” she asks, finally.

Bellamy raises his eyebrows. “A bouquet that tells him he’s a stupid, self-centered, unfaithful narcissist and you hate him? I think that’s as direct as flowers get.”

"Yes," Clarke answers, but she sounds skeptical. She draws the word out, and she's staring at the basil like she's trying to stare through it. He might be assuming too much, for how little he knows her, but Bellamy is tempted to call this her scheming face: her head tilted, eyes beginning to narrow, gaze darting quick across the countertop. "But—do you have any of those plants that eat people?"

At that, he barks out a laugh, the sharp sound of which seems to startle her as much as her dark and fanciful suggestion startled him. But when he looks at her again, she's smiling, and he knows she's going to be all right.

"I think you're confusing my store with the little shop of horrors!"

"No, no, I mean—" she tries to explain, making her arms into jaws that hinge at the elbows, opening them wide and shutting with a sharp clap, "I mean like those plants that just—snap! Like that."

Clarke looks like she's about to start giggling, and because he finds scheming that turns to giggling weirdly attractive, and because her enthusiastic impression of a man-eating plant was pretty cute, he finds himself holding back a giggle himself. Bellamy Blake, florist, might have long ago accustomed himself to embodying a non-traditional masculinity, but he's unsure how he feels about giggling.

So he tries to keep a mostly straight face when he says, "I don't actually keep Venus fly traps in stock. There's not a big demand for them—"

"Really? Because I would think they'd be a hugely popular item."

"Not everyone has your level of taste." An alarm is going off in Bellamy's head; it's saying _danger—danger—flirting territory fast approaching—_ But he ignores it. He leans his forearms on the countertop and adds, "But I can special order one for you."

He's never actually tried to order a Venus fly trap but that's a minor detail.

Clarke picks up one of the rejected daisies from Harper's bouquet and twirls it between her fingers; this is an excuse, Bellamy thinks, to stop looking at him. She purses her lips like she's thinking. "I guess," she admits, with some feigned reluctance, sliding the flower awkwardly behind her ear, "I trust your arrangement to send the message."

The flower slips out before she's even done speaking, and Bellamy rushes around the counter, scraping his hip against the side by accident as he does, to grab it before it falls. It was an instinct, but seems a completely unreasonable one as soon as he recovers—because now they're standing very close. And he was just going to throw the flower in the trash anyway.

"Here—um, let me help with that." His voice sounds a little scratchy and too quiet but Clarke just gives a little nod. He thinks he catches her blush when his hand accidentally brushes against her neck.

"It might not stay in place very long," he warns. He doesn't step back, as if he were waiting for not just the flower, but Clarke herself, to fall, as if he needed to be ready to catch her.

"I'll just have to be very careful," she answers, and slowly tilts her head back, and smiles up at him.

It's too soon to say he really likes her, but he _could_ really like her, definitely, which is probably why he finds himself saying, "I'm almost done with this other project. Do you want to stick around...? You can watch the fuck-you bouquet come together right in front of your eyes."

"Like magic," Clarke answers, and then, "Yes. I'd love to.”


End file.
